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Bad food has a history. Swindled tells it. Through a fascinating mixture of cultural and scientific history, food politics, and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many ways swindlers have cheapened, falsified, and even poisoned our food throughout history. In the hands of people and corporations who have prized profits above the health of consumers, food and drink have been tampered with in often horrifying ways--padded, diluted, contaminated, substituted, mislabeled, misnamed, or otherwise faked. Swindled gives a panoramic view of this history, from the leaded wine of the ancient Romans to today's food frauds--such as fake organics and the scandal of Chinese babies being fed bogus milk powder. Wilson pays special attention to nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and England and their roles in developing both industrial-scale food adulteration and the scientific ability to combat it. As Swindled reveals, modern science has both helped and hindered food fraudsters--increasing the sophistication of scams but also the means to detect them. The big breakthrough came in Victorian England when a scientist first put food under the microscope and found that much of what was sold as "genuine coffee" was anything but--and that you couldn't buy pure mustard in all of London. Arguing that industrialization, laissez-faire politics, and globalization have all hurt the quality of food, but also that food swindlers have always been helped by consumer ignorance, Swindled ultimately calls for both governments and individuals to be more vigilant. In fact, Wilson suggests, one of our best protections is simply to reeducate ourselves about the joys of food and cooking. Bee Wilson is the author of The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us. She writes a weekly food column for London's Sunday Telegraph and is a former food critic for the New Statesman. She has been named Food Journalist of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers and Food Writer of the Year by BBC Radio 4. "Marvellous and horrifying. . . . We're all caught in a food web, and Wilson shows us with urgent clarity how slender its strands are, and how little we can really trust them."--Diane Purkiss, Independent (London) "[A] fascinating and curiously uplifting read."--Jan Moir, Telegraph (London) "[E]ngrossing and occasionally revolting."--David Honigmann, Financial Times "[Wilson] wants to shake us awake, to make us look afresh at the food we eat. She does so triumphantly. . . . It is her considered and often humorous approach that makes this book so successful--and so alarming."--Clare Clark, Times (London) "[L]ively and unsettling. . . . The blatant frauds of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are set alongside the more subtle (and mostly legal) tinkering with food in the modern world. . . . Wilson places contemporary concerns about what we are eating in an original and thought-provoking context."--Paul Freedman, Times Literary Supplement "[R]iveting. . . . If ever a book could convince you that the only food worth eating is that which you have scrupulously shopped for in reputable local shops and cooked yourself from scratch, it is this one."--Val Hennessy, Mail on Sunday "Think the food we eat today is adulterated and unsafe to eat? Read this book and be amazed our ancestors ever survived to their next meal. . . . [Wilson's] intellectual rigor and disciplined research skills prove a great match with her seamless and engaging writing--she manages to bring history alive, and leaves you wanting more."--Guy Dimond, Time Out (U.K.) Endorsements: "Bee Wilson is a terrific writer who tells great stories, and her book could not be more timely given what's going on in the Chinese food industry today."--Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and What to Eat Preface xi Subject Areas:
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